It’s a shakedown, but its how collectivism plays out.

The Norks are back on the war path. And their nuke and missile tests are targeted at the US:

Defying a resolution issued by the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that condemned Pyongyang for test-firing a missile in December and tightened existing sanctions on the regime, North Korea’s National Defence Commission said the new nuclear test would be part of its action against the “sworn enemy of the Korean people”.

North Korea also vowed to push ahead with launches of more long-range rockets.

Describing the UN Security Council as “a marionette of the US,” North Korean state media claimed the resolutions are “products of its blind pursuance of the hostile policy of the US.

“The UNSC should apologise for its crime of seriously encroaching upon the independence of a sovereign state … and repeal all the unreasonable ‘resolutions’ at once,” KCNA reported.

Pyongyang also declared that no further talks on removing nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula are now possible and that a “nuclear test of a higher level” would be carried out.

Yes, they know the US isn’t going to do much to stop them, but anyone seeing this would be remiss to think that this isn’t just another desperate move. The best place to get a clear look at how disastrous the central planning practices of the various collectivist cults are, is in their production of food stuff. The communist system which we continue to see play out, over the last century plus, has continuously and permanently underperformed, and condemned hundreds of millions to famine, while starving millions to death. And this year is bringing the Norks more of this pain, to the point they are worried they can’t even feed their troops and need to really be worried:

“Ever since Kim Jong-un assumed the position of supreme leader, the media in North Korea and visiting foreigners have reported on the beautifully developing capital, Pyongyang. But in the shadow of the ‘gorgeous’ capital a hidden famine has broken out,” says Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor of Asiapress in Osaka, a North Korean watchdog with numerous clandestine reporters throughout North Korea.

The dark secret behind all of this new capital glitz and glamour has been a raging famine in the two Hwanghae provinces, where by some estimates 20,000 people have died of starvation in South Hwanghae alone in the year since Kim Jong-il died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his son and heir, the 29-year-old Kim Jong-un.

The Hwangwhe provinces, north and south, lie just south of the capital, between Pyongyang and the South Korean border. They are often said to be the “breadbasket” of North Korea, supplying food to both key elements of North Korea’s social order: The million-man army, many of them deployed along their southern border facing South Korea; and the capital, Pyongyang.

For the past year, however, these provinces have not been able to feed themselves, due in part to the demands of these two powerful groups. In particular the capital has required considerably more of the provincial agriculture output to feed the thousands of workers who were imported to work on the major construction projects underway for the past three to four years.

Every time the regime in NK fears the consequences of their brutal rule might really throw everything into whack, they resort to these tactics. And why not? Every other time they have done this, we have paid them bribes. They then promptly use anything we give them to keep their military all happy, while the slaves die off. That’s how your collectivist utopia always ends up working, regardless of how much pretend success they had before, when they run out of other people’s money, in a nutshell. Greece is currently leading the pack in Europe towards that direction. The shakedown there is of the northern Europeans. Look at California or Illinois closer at home for a glimpse of the same. Both are counting on the Feds bailing them out after over half a century of stupid collectivist shit. I do have to admit that I am worried about who we in the western collectivist world are going to have to shakedown when our freak show goes south though, huh?